At 8:45 AM -0500 3/9/01, Charles McCathieNevile wrote:
>I did some editing of a couple of chapters for a book called "How to Program
>in XML" or something like that. Although it didn't have accessibility as the
>overriding concern they were interested in comments on it (specifically
>requested it) and a number of accessibility things did get included. (I was
>looking at the chapters on CSS and HTML - I don't know how much got into the
>later stuff on XML).
I tech edited an XHTML book last year and the author was very interested
in issues of accessibility, and was glad each time I pointed out a
snippet of code where the <img> tag lacked alt attributes.
I don't think it's as dismal a situation as many people think, and I
believe that most authors _are_ receptive of accessibility issues. The
idea that they will all be mercenary and say "we only do what is
commercially viable" is far too cynical; most web book authors are
_not_ commercial web mercenaries, but are rather semi-jaded idealists
who like to learn, teach, and write.
My point is that they are our allies, not our enemies. I will see what
I can do about following up on my contacts within those communities and
raising awareness of accessibility issues.
--Kynn
--
Kynn Bartlett <kynn@idyllmtn.com>
http://www.kynn.com/